Day #334

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1 Cor 5-8 - Reading
1 Cor 5-8 - Audio

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1 Corinthians 5-8

Chapter 5

v. 2 – Paul wants the people to mourn over the sin in their midst. This mourning is to lead to discipline (i.e. to remove the person from their midst). It is a broken heart over what is happening and the destruction it causes the community that leads to discipline, not just in action that is supposed to be done.

v. 5 – To deliver a person over to Satan means to put a person out of the church community. It is Paul’s hope that this kind of action will bring about repentance as the person is cut off from the life and hope of the community.

v. 6-8 – Paul calls on them to see evil as evil and to get rid of the leaven (the man who has his father’s wife). Paul’s concern is that their attitude of boasting over what this man is doing will encourage others to follow this life or act in sinful ways. To expel the man is for his good and for the good of the community.

v. 9 – Paul tells us about a second group of people who need discipline. They are not to be cut off from the church, but subject to a milder form of discipline. They are no longer to associate with them. The challenge is to know what associate means. The idea seems to be that we keep a relationship with such people, but we do so with care so that we don’t get dragged down with them. The nature of our relationship changes so that we are not dealing with them in such a way, can draw us away from God, but we deal with them in such a way that draws them back to God.

Chapter 6

v. 2-3 – A consistent theme of scripture is that God’s people will be involved in judging the entire world. If they can judge the whole world, how much more can they judge small cases dealing with money?

v. 7 – It is worse to go to court in front of an unbelieving judge than it is to be defrauded. Again being defrauded seems to connect with Paul’s concern for the gospel, that it be presented in a good light to the world. Better to lose what you have than to stain the gospel. At the same time, Paul is going to deliver a stern and fearful warning to those who are defrauding others in the coming verses.

v. 12 – Paul’s desire is for people to grow up into an adult who lives in the ways of Christ. Some things that people do are not helpful in this growing process. Paul also says that we should refuse to be enslaved or to have something that exercises authority over us. The pursuit of things that we believe are lawful can bring about that kind of debilitating slavery.

v. 13 – Paul’s come back is that in reality our bodies were not made for sex, but for the Lord. This implies that what we do with our bodies matters and that we need to honor God with our bodies. It also means that we need to recognize that there is a higher calling to our physical beings than simply doing what we want with our bodies.

Chapter 7

v. 2 – Paul’s solution to this kind of sin is not to ban sexual relations, but to put them in their right context. Husbands and wives should meet each other’s sexual needs.

v. 5 – To deprive the other means to take something away from a person that rightfully belongs to them. Marriage partners need to make sure they are not taking away the sexual relationship from each other.

v. 10-11 – Roman law allowed divorce by separation. This meant a person could divorce another person either by packing up and leaving or by telling the other person to get out. When that was done, the divorce was considered legal and binding and you could marry someone else. When the text uses the word “separate”, it is speaking of a wife who walks out on her husband. The word “divorce” is actually “abandon” or “dismiss”. Paul’s charge is that husbands and wives may not simply walk out on each other. He did not allow for the extremely easy divorce of Roman society between two believers.

v. 16 – The believing spouse can be used by God to bring their unbelieving partner to faith.

v. 21 – While Paul tells people to retain their social status when it comes to slavery a person should not continually think about their situation. Should the opportunity arise for them to gain their freedom, they are right in pursuing it.

v. 29-31 – Jesus means that we are to love him more than our earthly relations. Paul’s words are designed to tell the church of Corinth that they need to have their priorities straight during the time of crisis.

v. 32 – Paul tells us that he wants us to be free from anxieties, but he points out that both married and unmarried people deal with anxieties or concerns. The unmarried have a single focus of anxiety, while married have a dual focus. Both have anxiety.

Chapter 8

v. 1 – While knowledge is good, it has to be used in the context of love so that the church is built up.

v. 8-9 – Eating or not eating is not the concern. The concern is if our actions are a stumbling block to the weak. Our actions can lead another to do what we are doing. They imitate us and the imitating for the weak can be a very bad thing indeed.

v. 10 – The weak person is someone who is unsure what is lawful and unlawful in his or her walk with Christ.

v. 12 – This verse implies that their conscience will not always be weak. There is a maturing process that will happen and will allow greater Christian freedom. But as that happens, the strong are not to act in ways that damage the fragile conscience. At the same time, the weak need to have a growing faith, understanding and knowledge.